iPhone

iPad

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Jailbreak

Cydia

Apple announced iPhone firmware 2.0 (which is just marketing, btw - its 1.2, not 2.0. Unless they plan on going from 1.2 to 2.0 between now and June) Thursday, which will be released in June. Specific dates have not been made available yet, I'm sure it will depend on how fast they can get it finished (my Time Capsule shipped "in February" - which meant Feb 29th, heh).

We posted it yesterday in the SDK quasi-liveblog thread, but I'd like to have a thread specifically for the new firmware, not for the SDK.

Some highlights:

Native support for Microsoft Exchange and ActiveSync.

Ability to store web apps locally. This is a big deal - the SDK will allow for building of web apps which can be saved offline and ran when not connected to the net.

AppStore, of course, allows you to download and install 3rd party apps straight from your iPhone. (Installer, Cydia).

Major code differences compared to previous firmware versions. Erica took a look at the SDK, and said the headers/frameworks are very different, which many of the DRP guys have also confirmed. What does this mean to you? Existing 3rd party applications will have to be rewritten a bit to get them working on the new firmware, so when it initially comes out, and is jailbroken, we'll be waiting a bit for unofficial apps to come back out.

Since I know you'll all ask even though there's no way of telling yet - WHO KNOWS how long the jailbreak and unlock will take. Not I. This isn't to say it will take long, just that we don't have any way of knowing right now until it gets in the hands of the proper dev's and hackers. The firmware IS being released as a beta according to Apple, which has gone out to "thousands of developers," so that's a possible headstart.

There's still a huge international community of iPhoners, so don't expect jailbreak and unlocking to go anywhere. Also no word yet on whether AppStore will work on non-ATT iPhone's, such as all us T-Mobile iPhone owners. Members of the DRP Dev Team have found that the new XCode release knows if your iPhone has been activated on ATT or not, so that may speak ill for non-ATT folk wanting to access AppStore. Just another hurdle to jump.